Art Monthly 483: February 2025

Contents

Hardeep Pandhal, Sepoy Man The Ghost, 2024

Interview

Channelling Ghosts

Hardeep Pandhal interviewed by Jamie Sutcliffe

Recreating the self is a natural product of cultural memory, it is not something that is stored like a permanent cache. Remembering is imagining, so every time one forms a memory, one is just recreating it to form one’s selfhood, to give oneself a narrative.

Paul Pfeiffer, ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, 2003–18

Interview

In the Maze

Paul Pfeiffer interviewed by Adam Heardman

The term ‘in media res’ – entering into a situation in the middle of it – to me describes any first-person-shooter game, learning the game by being in it. In media res becomes a new kind of narrative structure in which one wakes up in the maze and then learns the dimensions of the maze from within.

Gillian Wearing, I signed on and they would not give me nothing, from the series ‘Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say’, 1992–93

Feature

The Letter of the Law

Is it possible, Chris Townsend asks, for contemporary artists to rescue language from the clutches of commodity culture

Gillian Wearing’s photographic series ‘Signs that Say…’ restores the word to subjects whose lives are almost entirely structured by the language of the administrative state and capital.

Vinca Petersen, Speaker Man, 1996

Feature

Rave and Resist

Ben Burbridge considers the countercultural history of rave culture in the UK as an unfulfilled promise for a new politics of the left

Far from being the final nail in the coffin for Britain’s countercultural imaginary, the draconian Criminal Justice Act was another expression of neoliberal anxiety regarding experiments in unalienated creativity and collective joy.

Stanley Schtinter, Important Books (or, Manifestos Read by Children), 2021–22

Profile

Stanley Schtinter

Morgan Quaintance

Stanley Schtinter’s new film will, according to the artist, ‘only ever show in its analogue format, so it will always be an event to travel to and never streaming or screening digitally’. For Schtinter, the political power of collective viewing is something worth fighting for.

Editorial

Forged in Fire

LA’s wildfires, driven by the climate crisis, left more than just ash in their wake: they revealed a sense of solidarity and a collective desire to help that we all will need in the coming years.

While firefighters battled the blaze, the rest of the world watched in horror as the events unfolded on their screens, like a Hollywood disaster movie but in real time, a hellish vision of the future of the planet.

Artnotes

California Burning

The LA art world is caught up in the devastating urban wildfires; artists and galleries count the cost of storm recovery; former DCMS minister Margaret Hodge is appointed to lead the government review of ACE; New Contemporaries artists protest against the show’s sponsorship; Candida Gertler resigns from all UK arts institutions following Turner Prize artists’ protest against Tate’s links to the Outset art charity she co-founded; Argentina’s far-right government closes the Haraldo Conti Centre; Outpost Studios artists are evicted by Norwich Council; plus the latest on galleries, people, awards and more.

Hans Haacke, Germania, 1993

Exhibitions

Hans Haacke: Retrospective

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

George Macbeth

Hamad Butt: Apprehensions

IMMA, Dublin

Chris McCormack

Maud Sulter: You are my kindred spirit

Tramway, Glasgow

Amna Malik

Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet

Tate Modern, London

Tom Seymour

Alex Margo Arden: Safety Curtain

Auto Italia, London

Cherry Smyth

Özgür Kar: HEAVY GROUND

Emalin, London

Maria Walsh

Philippe Parreno: Voices

Haus der Kunst, Munich

Michael Kurtz

Not Going It Alone

Books

Not Going It Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating

Pablo Luis Alvarez

While ‘curatorial authority’ still finds a niche for survival, a less macho and more self-effacing understanding of curating is increasingly prevalent today.

John Smith, Being John Smith, 2023

Film

John Smith: Being John Smith

Erika Balsom

Every second of the film is as sharp as a diamond, with no trace of the confessional narcissism that is so prevalent elsewhere today.

Jean-Luc Godard, Scénarios, 2024

Film

Jean-Luc Godard: Scénario(s)

Alex Fletcher

In his comments, Jean-Luc Godard is both direct, offering practical advice to his collaborators about what images to include in certain sequences, but also intentionally oblique – he quips about the final image that it ‘doesn’t mean anything’.

No Other Land, 2024, dir by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

Film

International Documentary Film Festival: Amsterdam

Rachel Pronger

No Other Land found itself at home alongside other films which, despite their different angles, ultimately wrestled with the same questions. How far can we be neutral observers? And what happens when those who document become part of the story? As Leila Amini put it in a post-screening Q&A: ‘Do you shoot the house on fire, or do you stop to help?’

Dam Van Huynh and Elaine Mitchener, Graffiti Bodies II, 2024

Sound

Deep Time: Basquiat and Cage 84.24

Dan Kidner

The festival’s title signalled Elaine Mitchener’s intention to ‘imagine a conversation’ between John Cage and Jean Michel-Basquiat, drawing on the historical fact that in 1984 Fruitmarket staged concurrent solo exhibitions by the artists.

Yoshinori Niwa, Cleaning a Poster During the Election Period Until It Is No Longer Legible, 2024

Reports

Letter from Graz

Miriam Stoney

In Yoshinori Niwa’s 2024 durational performance Cleaning a Poster During the Election Period Until It Is No Longer Legible, the aesthetics of populist politics are quite literally washed away by a repeated and really meticulous labour of cleansing.

‘Land of Fire’, Kunsthalle Bega

Reports

Letter from Timisoara

Jelena Sofronijevic

Internationalising Romanian art is one option, though the country refuses ‘biennialisation’, instead prioritising local benefits.

Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian, 2019, estimated at $1m–1.5m, sold for $6.25m

Salerooms

New York Sales

Colin Gleadell

As cryptocurrency evangelists and digital art collectors like Snoop Dogg get more involved in bidding at art auctions, we can expect to see continuous change in the content of contemporary art sales, especially if those changes spell ‘M-O-N-E-Y’.

cover of the government’s ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’

Artlaw

Copyright and AI Consultation

Henry Lydiate

DCMS minister Chris Bryant was reminded that the average UK visual artist earned below the minimum wage and relied on their copyright royalties to continue their practices, and was asked to give assurances that ‘the plans for a copyright exception for AI learning will not further contribute to that financial instability and weaken the lifeblood of our creative economy’.